WASHINGTON – More than half of American voters believe that the system U.S.
political parties use to pick their candidates for the White House is
“rigged” and more than two-thirds want to see the process changed,
according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The results echo complaints from Republican front-runner Donald
Trump and Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders that the system is stacked
against them in favor of candidates with close ties to their parties – a
critique that has triggered a nationwide debate over whether the process is
fair.

The United States is one of just a handful of countries that
gives regular voters any say in who should make it onto the presidential
ballot. But the state-by-state system of primaries, caucuses and conventions is
complex. The contests historically were always party events, and while the
popular vote has grown in influence since the mid-20th century, the parties
still have considerable sway.

One quirk of the U.S. system – and the area where the parties
get to flex their muscle – is the use of delegates, party members who are
assigned to support contenders at their respective conventions, usually based
on voting results. The parties decide how delegates are awarded in each state,
with the Republicans and Democrats having different rules.

The delegates’ personal opinions can come into play at the party
conventions if the race is too close to call – an issue that has become a
lightning rod in the current political season.

Another
complication is that state governments have different rules about whether
voters must be registered as party members to participate. In some states,
parties further restrict delegate selection to small committees of party
elites, as the Republican Party in Colorado did this year.

‘SO FLAWED’

“I’d prefer to see a one-man-one-vote system,” said
Royce Young, 76, a resident of Society Hill, South Carolina, who supports Democratic
front-runner Hillary Clinton. “The process is so flawed.”

Trump has repeatedly railed against the
rules, at times calling them undemocratic. After the Colorado Republican Party
awarded all its delegates to Ted Cruz, for example, Trump lashed out in a Wall
Street Journal opinion piece, charging “the system is being rigged by
party operatives with ‘double-agent’ delegates who reject the decision of
voters.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has
dismissed Trump’s complaints as “rhetoric” and said the rules would not be
changed before the Republican convention in July.

Trump swept the five Northeastern nominating contests on Tuesday
in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island. The New York
billionaire has 950 delegates to 560 for Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, and
153 for Kasich, the Ohio governor, according to the Associated Press. A total
of 1,237 delegates are needed to secure the Republican nomination.

On the Democratic side, Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont,
has taken issue with the party’s use of superdelegates, the hundreds of elite
party members who can support whomever they like at the convention and who this
year overwhelmingly back front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Clinton has repeatedly emphasized that she is beating Sanders in
both total votes cast and in pledged delegates, those who are bound by the
voting results – rendering his complaints about superdelegates moot.

On Tuesday, the former secretary of state won Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Delaware and Connecticut, while Sanders won in Rhode Island. Clinton
leads Sanders by 2,141 delegates to 1,321, according to the AP, with 2,383
needed to win the nomination.

Sanders has also criticized party bosses for not holding enough
prime-time television debates and said before a string of primaries open only
to registered Democrats this month that “independents have lost their right to
vote,” referring to a voter block that has tended to favor him.

A
Democratic National Committee official was not immediately available to
comment.